The invention relates to a fuel supply system for supplying an internal combustion engine of a motor vehicle, having two feed means, which are arranged in a fuel tank, for feeding fuel, and having a connecting piece for guiding the fuel fed by the feed means from two inlets, which are each connected to the feed means, to an outlet.
Fuel supply systems of this type are used, for example, for motor vehicles having a high power consumption and narrow fuel tanks, in which an individual feed means is frequently insufficient in terms of power, and are known in practice. Furthermore, fuel supply systems of this type are used in what are referred to as saddle tanks, in which the fuel tank has two chambers, with suction jet pumps which feed fuel into one or two baffles additionally being arranged in the individual chambers. The connecting pieces combine a flow from two lines, for example from the feed units, into one fuel line leading to the internal combustion engine or to one or two suction jet pumps. The connecting pieces of the known fuel supply system are conventional T-pieces.
A disadvantage of the known fuel supply system is that, for example, if one of two feed means is in operation, fuel may overflow from one of the feed means to the feed means which has been switched off. This results in an unnecessary circulation of the fuel and to energy losses in the feeding of the fuel to the internal combustion engine. In order to avoid this problem, a practical remedy is to use a respective nonreturn valve between the inlets and the feed means. However, this results in a very large structural outlay on the fuel supply system.
The invention is based on the problem of developing a fuel supply system of the type mentioned at the beginning in such a manner that an unnecessary overflowing of the fuel via the connecting piece is avoided and that the fuel supply system is constructed in a particularly simple manner.